Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

2. The relation of crime to vices, and the distinction between them. The two great vices, drunkenness and licentiousness, are in themselves crimes by common statute, and yield by far the greater number of commitments from the police courts. When, therefore, it is asserted that these vices, especially drunkenness, cause the greater part of the whole body of crime, the statement is numerically true; but it is not of necessity true if we analyze the causes of the greater crimes which are not those of drunkenness or licentiousness.

Great care must be taken to distinguish between the cause of a crime like robbery or forgery or murder, and the concomitant of it. Burglars and forgers and murderers may drink, but their crimes may not be due to their intemperance.

See notes on the statistical determination of causes of poverty, American Statistical Association, March, 1889, with remarks following by Dr. Dike. See, also, Report of Manual Labor Bureau for 1881.

3. Legal preventions of crime.

(1.) The restraint of the habitual criminal. Two methods have been advised and employed: First, imprisonment for life; second, police supervision for life, or for a shorter period.

Virginia enjoins imprisonment for life after the third offense. The law is mandatory. Maine allows imprisonment for life after the second offense. The law is permissive. Ohio follows Virginia, but tempers the sentence by giving a chance of regaining a qualified liberty.

The American Bar Association adopted in 1885 the following resolution : "" Resolved, that provision should be made by law in every State for subjecting all persons who have been twice sentenced to imprisonment for any crime or misdemeanor to police supervision for life or for such shorter term, not less than five years after the expiration of their second term of imprisonment, as the court may order; and also to perpetual deprivation of the right to vote or hold public office."

(2.) The adoption, so far as practicable, of the principle of the indeterminate sentence with a view to graduating reformed men only from our penal institutions.

(3.) Compulsory education with special care for the children of the vicious. The education to be such as will aid in securing an honest livelihood. The mind that is trained is not safe from temptation, only the mind which is preoccupied, and filled with worthy ambitions and plans. (4) The suppression of demoralizing exhibitions and demoralizing publications.

(5.) The breaking up of haunts of vice and crime in tenement houses. There must be a relentless pursuit of the vicious who cannot be reclaimed by the ordinary means, that they be not allowed to accumulate and mass in particular spots. In the language of Charles Booth in "Life and Labor in East London," "they must be improved out of existence."

See account of Glasgow Experiment, "The Century Magazine," March, 1890.

4. The social and moral preventives of crime.

(1.) The development of a generous sentiment toward the reformed criminal.

(2.) The establishment of the home through the invasion of the tenement house.

(3.) An aggressive work on the part of the churches through the employment of a sufficient force of regular workers among the pauperized and vicious classes.

(4.) The careful study of the social causes which are producing the conditions of crime.

A special inquiry may be, To what extent is pauperism or crime the alternative?

Such a study will prepare the way for the investigation of the sources and remedies of Pauperism.

ANDOVER.

William Jewett Tucker.

NOTES FROM ENGLAND.

SINCE the last "Notes from England" were sent to the "Andover Review," two great preachers have passed from our midst. Every one knew Cardinal Newman by name, but few were left who remembered the personality of the great preacher and churchman: when his death was known, it came as no surprise, almost as a matter of course, so much had he outlived his own generation.

Not so with the death of Canon Liddon. The Oxford professor and Canon of St. Paul's had long been in uncertain health, but he was expected soon to resume his place in the pulpit of the greatest of London churches. Canon Liddon, though many years a University professor, will not be remembered as a scholar; indeed, his only serious contributions to literature, his Bampton Lectures on the Divinity of our Lord, are nothing more than an eloquent and even passionate restatement of the orthodox ecclesiastical doctrine, enunciated at a time and in a manner which gave them a deserved popularity and a wide circulation. It was as a preacher that Canon Liddon was really great; he was the one preacher in the Church of England who could be compared with Mr. Spurgeon. His sermons, carefully prepared and delivered from the full manuscript, were catholic in feeling and practical in teaching, though at times they would proclaim the orthodox tenets of the Church of England with a vehemence equal to that with which they called men to personal and social righteousness. No man knew better how to fill the great dome of St. Paul's with his voice; none ever thrilled so profoundly the great multitudes that gathered beneath it. At the same time Canon Liddon was a churchman of the more rigid type; it was believed that he would have been a bishop long ago but for the uncompromising attitude he assumed on several matters, and the decided language in which he expressed himself upon them. One instance may suffice: he would not and could not look on the Revised Translation of the Bible with satisfaction, because men who were not members of the Church of England had been invited to take part in the work of revision. Such peculiarities of view were rare in his preaching and will soon be forgotten; he will be remembered only as one who helped to deepen the spiritual life of thousands of the upper and middle classes of London society.

The death of Canon Liddon tempts one to inquire the extent and

power of preaching in our modern life. Certainly in England, and in London especially, there are many opportunities for great preachers. It is a mark of the most popular preaching to-day that it preaches social morality more than ever before, and that personal morality is more insisted on than purity of doctrine; it is a sign of the times, that there are a number of comparatively young man whose fame as preachers is already established, and of all of whom it may be said that they preach the moralities of man and of society more than the verities of dogma and creed. In the Church of England, Canon Scott Holland of St. Paul's, on whom the mantle of Canon Liddon may descend, unites a philosophical method with popular sympathies. Among the Baptists, Dr. Clifford has taught how a preacher may thoroughly enter into the scientific spirit and make his knowledge of material nature an instrument of eloquence in preaching a spiritual gospel. Among the Methodists, the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes has raised up an enthusiasm for a self-denying and philanthropic Christianity, which is making the Methodists foremost in evangelistic work and reforming energy. Among the Congregationalists, Mr. Robert F. Horton, of London, and Mr. Charles A. Berry, of Wolverhampton, are prominent as popular preachers, who unite the essence of the gospel for the souls of men with the need of a reformed and purified social order. Indeed, it is the essence and power of our best preaching to-day, that it unites the sanctification of society with the salvation of

man.

This practical social element has been prominent at the Church Congress at Hull and at the Congregational Union meeting at Swansea. At the former, the most remarkable meetings were three, at one of which the system of brotherhoods of celibate workers was advocated to reclaim the careless or degraded of the cities; at another, a discussion on gambling and betting elicited the suggestion that members of the Royal family, instead of themselves betting on horse races, should refuse to attend race meetings which were not perfectly free from the taint of this vice; and another, at which a Liverpool ship-owner spoke on the spiritual responsibilities of employers of labor. Mr. Benjamin Tillett, one of the leaders of the Dock strike of last year, and a great Trades-Union organizer, was to have been present at the Church Congress to speak on a discussion on the church in its relation to strikes and labor movements, but owing to the feeling being too strong in some conservative minds that a socialist and a dissenter should not be an invited guest at the Church Congress, Mr. Tillett withdrew his name from the programme.

At the Congregational Union assembly the same interest in social questions was seen, and a proposal was made that a standing committee on social questions should be appointed. Another feature of the Congregational Union was the meeting to explain and enforce the value of young people's guilds: these guilds are associations of the younger members of the church and congregation for a variety of purposes - religious, educational, and social as well as recreative; by uniting the various agencies of each church together, by making the Missionary Band help the Sunday-school and the Debating Society reënforce the open-air preachers, by affording recreation and amusements as well as arranging prayer-meetings and revivals, the object of the guild is at once to attract, to retain, and to employ all the young men and women who have been, or may be, drawn into communion with the church. An official hand

book for guilds has been published by the Congregational Union, and is full of suggestions, old and new, for enlarging the sphere of a church's work.

The latest step forward made by the Congregational body is the obtaining of a special organ for itself in the press. This is to be a weekly newspaper, "The Independent and Nonconformist," which is to take the place of a journal, "The Nonconformist and Independent," which was devoted to the work of the Free Churches in general, and for which there was hardly the need, since three or four other papers held a similar platform. This paper was originally started as the "Patriot," at a time when many disabilities, political and social, were laid on Nonconformists; it has had an eventful history, and its staff has numbered eminent men, such as Henry Rogers, the essayist, and Edward Miall, the well-known member of Parliament. Hitherto, the Congregational body has had no denominational newspaper, though it supports (not very worthily) a quarterly "Congregational Review." The "Christian World," which represents the Free Churches generally, has been the paper most widely read among Congregationalists; it is one of the most able and enterprising of weekly newspapers, and has been constantly in favor of civil, religious, and doctrinal liberty; its circulation is reputed to be equal to that of any two other religious newspapers in the kingdom. Some years ago its latitudinarian views caused so much dissatisfaction among a few wealthy Nonconformists, that the "British Weekly " was started as a rival on more orthodox but still liberal lines; this paper, which is particularly able in its literary work, has succeeded beyond the expectations of its founders, being largely circulated in Scotland.

The Methodist body have two newspapers: the "Methodist Recorder" is a conservative force; the other, the "Methodist Times," represents the progressive elements in Methodism, and especially sets before itself the aim of uniting the various Methodist bodies into one communion. Of the Church of England newspapers, which are very numerous, the "Church Times" is the most popular; its programme is ultra-sacerdotal and ritualist; it is remarkable for its freedom in criticising any bishop who may take up any attitude which seems to compromise the sacerdotal theory. The "Guardian " is the aristocratic organ of the Church of England, and is eminently able and respectable. The "Spectator," though not a purely religious journal, has long spoken with great influence and generally with liberality on religious matters; but in recent years its tone has become reactionary and narrower, and since it has been known that its editor, Mr. R. H. Hutton, has had serious thoughts of entering the Roman Catholic Church, its authority on religious questions has diminished. The recently started "Speaker has had some able theological reviews and some weighty articles on current religious questions, and may prove a powerful voice in the forum of religious dis

cussion.

HAMPSTEAD, LONDON.

[ocr errors]

Joseph King.

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

L'EDUCATION MORALE DES LE BERCEAU. Par BERNARD PÉREZ. 8vo, pp. 320. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1888.

Children often enough have books of stories and fairy tales written for their amusement, and sometimes the scientist will study them for the sake of analyzing their thoughts, experience, and conduct. But it is less frequently that a sufficient interest in their training can be found to prescribe a method of making them more than undisciplined machines. We know well enough that the child is the father of the man, but we too often neglect the fact in the education beginning with the cradle, because we assume that it does not begin until a later period. This book of Pérez, therefore, calls attention to and emphasizes a fact quite as important as anything adapted to the education of mature minds. Most books on education deal with the methods of teaching scientific, historical, and literary facts and ideas, and say little about the moral education of children. This work, therefore, supplies a want where it is most needed; and it is to be remarked that the rational treatment of children in regard to moral training requires for many reasons more attention in Europe than in America, although we are not so perfect in this matter as to justify any indifference regarding it. There is a kind of training called moral given to European children which is simply the suppression of healthy instincts, and so a preparation for that dangerous reaction which is sure to follow maturity and the attainment of one's liberty. This work of Pérez deals with the question in much the same spirit as another popular work of the same author, although a mere investigation into the mental life and habits of infants. The author gives a proper place to mere authority in this early education, but he modifies or limits it by insisting upon the part which the natural sympathy of the child shall play in obtaining obedience. The method, of course, is the one universally recognized, that of a proper balance between pleasure and pain as incentives to the formation of habits which may become independent of those motives. Fear is to be avoided as much as possible. In its place we should seek to instill sympathy and courage. There is also a good chapter on credulity, in which we are warned against deceiving children by conceptions beyond their understanding. It is easy to presume upon their confidence and to instill ideas which they accept on authority and which they abandon on mature reflection, and with consequences to be deplored. There is much good psychological analysis in the work, and if it is unsatisfactory for some failures to reach the foundation of things, the book is commended by its interest in the one point with which all moral education must begin. J. H. Hyslop.

ESQUISSE D'UN MORALE SANS OBLIGATION, NI SANCTION. Par M. GUYAN. 8vo, pp. 254. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1890.

This little work has more interest than the one we have already reviewed, partly because it is less historical, and partly because it enters more fully into the subject of Ethics proper. We discover in it more of the author's real theory, although in some points there seems to be a return to theories already criticised by the author. But there is clearly an effort on his part to evade such a suspicion. The principal point of interest is the statement that "virtue is not identical with happiness."

« НазадПродовжити »